A doubly bad sports day for me ... the Warriors fell short in their bid to close out their improbably run against Western conference top seed Dallas. The down and out Mavs now just have to win two in a row to triumph, while Golden State gets a chance to close out the series on their home floor. Is it a) me being a worrywart, b) me heeding recent Golden State history, or c) me being a general pessimist that is causing me to think the Warriors great postseason run will end in disappointment?

My laptop has its third LCD screen in less than a week, after the Dell tech popped by Stanford to replace it again. Hopefully this one has a lot of life left in both the hinges and the monitor. I'm currently looking at laptop bags to replace my nice but rapidly deteriorating Kenneth Cole messenger. I've become entranced by the idea of a sturdy vintage leather messenger bag. I'm not thrilled with KC's, but i've found nice ones from Tumi and L.L. Bean online.

Writing a blog post and trying to follow A Fistful of Dollars is no easy feat. Throw in writing some IDL code and the movie becomes downright incomprehensible. Furthermore, when i finally do look up from my laptop to glance at the screen, i keep getting the heebie jeebies from the dubbing.

V's week of shows continues as she secured a last minute ticket to Morrissey's performance at the Paramount. My interest in Moz is mostly dead these days so i opted to stay home, relax, attempt to watch old westerns, and thwart some Mexican rebels in Ghost Recon 2. That's right, south-of-the-border criminals seem to be the order of the evening.

I haven't yet figured out why my website guest statistics have been occasionally inflated recently. I was all set to sit down and probe my code, particularly after successfully upgrading my concert and album review comments interface earlier this evening, but now i see that the erroneous statistics aren't a constant problem. Which naturally makes isolating, reproducing, and correcting the problem that much harder. Perhaps i'll instead focus my coding compulsions toward finally implementing the comment utility on ana-girl.

The long diminutive Graves lab is primed to undergo some significant growth this year, as i'm looking to hire another two molecular biologists, a radiochemist, and i've got an electrical engineer signed up for the fall. That would double the size of my group, and give me a squad that i could genuinely call "my lab". Coupled with my recent acquisition of NIH funding and my continuing stream of published papers this year, my academic progress in 2007 has gone swimmingly to say the least.

People always call in to the Howard Stern Show to say they had to pull their car over because they were laughing so hard. I had my first of such moments a few weeks back when i heard Richard Christy's crank call to a pharmacy where he played a ridiculous porn clip of a man moaning while he told the pharmacist he was having chronic dry heaves. I just listened to it again here and Tara walked over to me, ostensibly because she was concerned that i was wailing and crying. In laughter, of course. You can also hear the previously discussed Yankees/tapeworm clip there as well.

Still have little to no idea what's going on in San Miguel during my first viewing of Clint Eastwood's spaghetti western escapades. All i know is that the crying kid has got the freakiest dubbing of all.

I need a better method for synchronizing my assorted calendars. Lately i've had way too many missed appointments and forgotten visitors, largely because i've got Outlook calendars on both my laptop and desktop, and i do a relatively lousy job of keeping each up to date and furthermore transferring the calendar to something that can regularly pester me, ie my cell phone. I've made an effort to record all my appointments in at least one of my Outlook calendars recently, and also taken the even more important step of not scheduling new affairs without first checking the calendar. However there remains the non-trivial issue of keeping everything accurate. Stanford has a nice online calendar application, which i think would make a nice central scheduling hub if it only could import and export Outlook data. Any suggestions? Is Google Calendar useful? More importantly, can it export to my BlackBerry?

It's odd that every time i can't find a piece of software that meets my needs exactly, my thoughts turn to solving the problem myself with Visual Basic. Speaking of VB, my iTunes log application has stabilized, and to my eye runs robustly and efficiently.

The man with no name just got the holy hell kicked out of him, apparently for double crossing a gang of Mexican bandits. Excuse me ... banditos. Any more in depth plot analysis than that and i'd have to actually pay attention to the film. I can't wait for the cackling sidekick villain to get his.

Kevin is coming up for a visit this weekend, and may come bearing a Wii to complete V and my collection of next-gen gaming consoles. I'm still not ga-ga over Nintendo's last gen hardware with a next gen gimmick, but part of me must think that when i bring the Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360 into close proximity that something magical will happen, like the shankara stones in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

My patience was finally broken earlier this week ... i ran out of Sumotech and tried to improvise while styling my hair. Halfway through the day i caught my reflection in a mirror and was genuinely angry. I've come to the realization that long hair is not for me. While through the years i've tried to convince myself that i have "wavy" hair by keeping it short and teasing it out, now that it's got some length i can say conclusively that it is full on curly. I've had to exercise quite a bit of restraint this week to keep from digging my clippers out of storage and shaving it all off. Veronica has tried to convince me to let it continue to grow, but my assertion that i officially hate my hair persuaded her to let me do a Delilah. I've got an appointment with Samuel next Tuesday and am now counting the minutes.

Why is it that when i had short hair and i saw the hipster kids at shows, it seemed like they all had long hair, and now that mine is long i only see short haired indie boys? Am i perpetually behind, or god forbid, ahead of the curve?

And there goes Clint off into the hills. With some wonderful Ennio Morricone accompaniment. Makes you pine for your own theme song, à la Peter Griffin.